WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Tag Archives: Office of Fossil Energy

FPL’s planned-for-a-decade pipeline to the sea just happens to connect
Sabal Trail with an LNG export port. Nevermind that this MR-RV Lateral
was never run through the FERC permitting process: FERC rolled it into
Florida Southeast Connection.

FPL is seeking state approval for a 32-mile natural gas pipeline to
provide an uninterrupted supply to Florida Power & Light Co.’s
new Riviera Beach plant.

Map: Palm Beach Post, 31 March 2012.

The story said FPL was working with FDEP to determine the final route.
It also said:

The project is not related to FPL’s proposed $1.5 billion, 300-mile
natural gas pipeline that would have run from Bradford County to
Martin County. The Florida Public Service Commission Continue reading →

Crystal River, Florida, October 18, 2018 —
Strom, Inc. now proposes exporting liquid natural gas (LNG) by tanker ship
through the port of Tampa.
That explosive cargo would get there by land from Crystal River
through densely populated areas.
LNG tanker ships would go out right by downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg, and under the I-275 bridge.
Strom has always said some of this fracked methane would likely come from
the Sabal Trail pipeline.
Getting on with solar power for the Sunshine state makes a lot more sense
than shipping gas under our rivers, through private property, and by major cities for corporate export profit.
Clean energy for Florida and beyond is an issue in this election year.

Map: by WWALS, from federal and state filings of LNG export operations.

Strom “may elect to file an amendment to our application to allow
transportation of LNG by LNG tanker,”
according to its latest semi-annual report
to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE)
Office of Fossil Energy (FE) (see http://wwals.net/?p=46497),
According to Strom’s website it means LNG tanker ships, like this one:
Continue reading →

Strom has insisted on liquid natural gas (LNG) in shipping containers since 2014, back when it tried to get FERC to state it wasn’t overseeing small-export LNG.
Strom still aims to export through the Port of Tampa, and maybe other ports.

“As a direct result of recent Offtake and LNG supply requests, Strom
may elect to file an amendment to our application to allow
transportation of LNG by LNG tanker.”

As we’ve seen so often in the Sabal Trail docket,
Spectra seems to be acting in place of FERC,
responding yesterday to thousands of comments
on FERC’s certificate rulemaking.

Spectra’s bottom line: a pipeline company’s bottom line matters more
than the Fifth Amendment due process, or water, air, or safety.
See page 25:

Contrary to some commenters’ arguments, the Commission’s public
interest determinations are not rendered insufficient under the
Fifth Amendment public use requirement because the Commission
considers precedent agreements among applicants and affiliates to be
evidence of public benefits.

Spectra repeatedly argues that
FERC does not have authority to consider hardly anything other than
whether the pipeline company has customers, yet FERC has authority to give eminent domain to private corporations and to let them gouge through our lands and under our rivers without local agreement or payment first.

In this election year, you can ask every candidate for statehouse
or Congress whether they support Continue reading →

Florida Bulldog reports on LNG exports right now from Fortress Energy’s
Hialeah plant through Port Everglades via Florida East Coast Railway (FECR)
through densely populated neighborhoods.
The larger story includes FECR can export via Crowley Maritime
from Jacksonville, and
Pivotal LNG is already exporting LNG from Alabama and Georgia through JAX,
arriving via truck down I-75 and I-10.
Plus offshoot pipelines from Sabal Trail already go to both Jacksonville and Riviera Beach.
Why should we let these corporations cash in on fracked methane
now that solar power is already here?

About the same time Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) executives were
convincing Florida’s east coast cities and counties to back its idea
of privately owned passenger trains traversing downtowns and densely
populated neighborhoods, it quietly sought and won permission to
haul extremely flammable liquified natural gas along the same
tracks.

What sort of oversight can the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) be performing for
Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals when it says that:
“DOE has stated that it ‘cannot precisely identify
all the circumstances under which such
action would be taken.’”
Further:

DOE/FE has never rescinded a longterm non-FTA export authorization
for any reason. Further, DOE has no record of ever having vacated or
rescinded an authorization to import or export natural gas over the
objections of the authorization holder.

This is all from a recent DoE article in the U.S. Federal Register,
in which DoE manages to come up with only one example:

Washington, D.C., June 13, 2018 — WWALS Watershed Coalition (WWALS) prepares to sue the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for shirking its legally-required oversight of inland liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals. “LNG trucks barrel down I-75 right by my old high
school in Lowndes County, Georgia,” said Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman, after meeting with WWALS’ attorneys in Washington, D.C.
“Those trucks from LNG terminals in Alabama and Georgia pass a technical college, a conference center, motels, homes, and businesses, going to I-10 for Jacksonville, Florida, where that LNG goes at least as far on ships as Puerto Rico.”

“I am greatly concerned that an LNG commercial project of this magnitude is not only planned, but that apparently has slipped through the cracks of local and federal regulators,”
said WWALS member Harriet Heywood of Citrus County, Florida.

At the ends of the Sabal Trail pipeline chain in Florida, trucks go out from half a dozen LNG export operations authorized by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy (FE). If any of those trucks wrecks, federal standard everyone should be evacuated half a mile downwind, including high schools and hospitals. Very few local emergency responders know this and fewer have appropriate emergency plans.

LNG trucks barrel down I-75 through Georgia past high schools, colleges, businesses, and homes, then on I-10 to Jacksonville for ships at least as far as Puerto Rico. At the ends of the Sabal Trail pipeline chain in Florida, trucks go out from half a dozen LNG export operations authorized by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy (FE). If any of those trucks wrecks, federal standard everyone should be evacuated half a mile downwind, including high schools and hospitals. Very few local emergency responders know this and fewer have appropriate emergency plans.

Map: by WWALS, from federal and state filings of LNG export operations.

Did you know there are multiple liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities already
shipping LNG down I-75 and I-10 to Jacksonville, Florida,
another one in Hialeah, FL apparently exporting through Miami,
with permission to export from four ports up and down Florida’s east coast,
plus another permitted at Crystal River, and still more?

Only a few of the LNG operations shown were permitted by the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); most notably
Elba Island LNG, downstream from Savannah, Georgia.
Most of them have been authorized by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE).

FERC, if it follows its own rules, should reject the DSEIS, stop Sabal Trail, and revoke its permit, says a motion filed today with FERC by Suwannee Riverkeeper.

Followup blog posts will feature major sections and arguments from these 20 pages with their 93 footnotes.
The basic arguments are summarized on the first page:

WWALS argues that no SEIS can be complete without accounting for GHG
from Liquid Natural Gas (“LNG”) exports, nor without
comparing natural gas to solar power, according to precedents
already set by FPL, FERC, and others, which also reopen the whole
basis of the FERC 2016 Order.

FERC may not care, but the D.C. Circuit Court may, or candidates
for office, or the voting public.